Yemeni president fires PM ahead of talks with rebels

FILE – In this Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012 file photo,Yemen’s then Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi waves as he enters a polling center to cast his vote in Sanaa, Yemen. Yemens Shiite rebels said Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015 that President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled the rebel-controlled capital earlier this month and has begun reconstituting his authority in the south, is wanted for justice. The move escalated a crisis that threatens to split the Arab worlds poorest country. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)

Arab news outlets say Yemeni President, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, dismissed his prime minister and vice president, Khaled Bahah, in a major government shakeup ahead of United Nations-brokered peace talks with Iran-backed Houthi militants later this month.

Yemen state television, reporting on Sunday, said Hadi had replaced Bahah with politically powerful army General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar as the embattled government’s new vice president. He also appointed lawmaker Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr as prime minister.

The president had offered no public explanations for the moves by early yesterday. But Yemeni and other international media have reported simmering differences between Hadi and Bahah over tactics and strategies for ending the country’s protracted civil war.

Those differences exploded into public view in December when Bahah, appointed prime minister by Hadi in April 2015, rejected the president’s move to reshuffle the government without first consulting with him.